Why the EPA’s bold new EV rules will be able to withstand a second Trump presidency

A new Environmental Protection Agency rule doesn’t require automakers to sell electric cars. But it sets such strict limits on tailpipe pollution that by 2032 more than half of all car sales are likely to be zero-emissions.



Over 30 years, the regulation will avoid more than 7 billion tons of CO2 emissions, the EPA says. Drivers will save $6,000 over the life of a car because they’ll be paying less for fuel and maintenance. The cuts in air pollution will provide around $13 billion in annual health benefits.



Despite the benefits, former President—and current presidential candidate—Donald Trump has said that he wants to roll back the regulation if he’s elected. Four years ago, he rolled back an Obama-era clean car standard. But that may be less likely to succeed now, in part because a staggering amount of investment has already gone into electric vehicles. More than $114 billion has poured into EV factories, battery factories, and other parts of the EV supply chain in the U.S. since the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022, according to one analysis.



That amount of investment “is unprecedented,” Chet France, a former EPA executive who worked on the Obama-era regulation, said at a press briefing about the new rule. “To put that at risk, I think, would give people pause.” Margo Oge, another former EPA executive, said the situation is very different than it was four years ago.



Of the thousands of jobs that are being created for the EV supply chain, most are going to red states like Georgia.



“If these policies are rolled back, it’s not going to affect tree huggers in San Francisco or New York,” says Bob Keefe, executive director of E2, an organization that tracks where new EV and battery factories are being built. “It’s going to affect hardworking people in Republican red states, frankly, because that’s where the majority of these projects are going—Georgia and Tennessee. I’m in North Carolina right now, where Toyota is building a giant electric vehicle plant, where Albemarle is building a giant lithium processing plant, where several companies are springing up creating hundreds of jobs building electric-vehicle charging stations.”



It’s not good for automakers if the regulation changes again either (even though they successfully fought to make the new rules roll out more slowly than they otherwise might have). “Rolling back the standards or trying to interrupt them just creates a lot of market uncertainty, which is really unhelpful to automakers who are trying to plan their investments,” says Luke Tonachel, a senior adviser for the NRDC Action Fund, a political advocacy group affiliated with the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.



If Trump is elected and does try to roll back the regulation, his administration would have to start the rulemaking process all over again, which would take another two or three years as it goes through public commenting and other required steps. At the same time, the transition to EVs will likely keep accelerating, as electric cars keep getting cheaper and consumers have more options. A record 1.2 million electric vehicles were sold in the U.S. last year—far more than some experts predicted might be possible by this point—and EV charging infrastructure is also growing quickly.



Still, Trump could slow the industry down. “The rhetoric that we’re hearing is already starting to impact companies and their plans,” Keefe says. “I was just talking with a battery manufacturer who’s building a $2 billion battery plant in Newnan, Georgia, who said, ‘You know what, even if these policies don’t get rolled back, the fact that people are posturing and saber-rattling is already starting to spook financiers and potential partners.’ So this type of talk is damaging already.”



Some fossil fuel companies and Republican attorneys general plan to sue over the new rule. It’s not clear what the result might be if a case ends up in the Supreme Court, though precedent is on the EPA’s side. “These standards are just an extension of what the EPA has been doing for more than 50 years, as they are required to under law set by Congress,” Tonachel says. “So these standards absolutely should be held up in court.”